The Confluence

The Penguins have played 30 games now this season, and the NHL has already scheduled them for three Saturday afternoon matinees.

And in each one, they’ve looked pathetic.

This afternoon the Penguins ventured into Philadelphia, where the Flyers were easily the more physical and hustling team in a 6-3 pounding over the Penguins.

HCMT made the decision to continue to sit Marc-Andre Fleury, and in some respects it came back to bite him in the butt-ocks. Dany Sabourin stopped only 21 of 27 shots on goal, and while the loss certainly cannot be blamed on him, he’s no longer making the big saves. In addition, for the fourth time in three games he’s played, he’s came out too high on pucks coming off the boards, which have led to goals. That was the case in the game’s first goal, as on the powerplay Kimmo Timonen’s slapper was wide, but Joffrey Lupul took the rebound and easily made the wrap-around goal to give the Flyers the 1-0 lead only about six minutes into the game.

The Flyers doubled their lead, again on the powerplay, when Mike Knuble scored off a rebound from a Mike Richards wrister to make it 2-0 Flyers.

The Penguins cut into the lead about eight minutes into the second period when the Pens had a set play off a faceoff win in their own zone. As the puck was shot around the boards, Tim Wallace launched into Braydon Coburn then passed to Ruslan Fedotenko. Fedotenko brought the puck into the Flyers zone, fired a cross-ice pass to Alex Goligoski, who then made a nice centering pass to Jordan Stall, who deflected it past Flyers’ goalie Martin Biron to make it 2-1.

Their fortunes didn’t last long, though, as the Flyers came right back a few minutes later when Richards fired a hard wrister before getting hammered by Brooks Orpik that hit the left post and into the net, making it 3-1 Flyers.

They extended their lead to 4-1 on a nice tic-tac-toe play from Jeff Carter to Matt Carle to Scott Hartnell with the tap-in past Sabourin.

The Flyers then made it 5-1 on the powerplay again when Richards’ pass-shot at the point was nicely deflected by Knuble and into the net.

Midway through the third period the Pens put another goal on the board when Eric Godard deflected a Petr Sykora pass past Biron to make it 5-2 Flyers.

The Flyers finished their scoring with a Jeff Carter powerplay goal, then the Penguins finished up with a token Fedotenko goal.

Other notes:
- UPDATE: Jeff Taffe and Connor James were reassigned back to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton after the game. That’s a good indication that Max Talbot and Mike Zigomanis will be back before the Pens’ next game Thursday against the Thrashers.
- The Pens’ powerplay was 1 for 4, while their penalty kill was 2 for 6.
- Wallace has impressed so far, has a good nose for the puck, as well as throws some solid hits.
- Want another stat to show how valuable someone in front of the net is ?? Knuble had 7 shots on net.
- Defensively, the Penguins did have 20 blocked shots.
- Classy move by the Flyers’ organist. As the Flyers’ fans were making their juvenile “Crosby sucks” chants, which is fine, the organist not only started playing along with the fans, but started up the chants with the organ himself. I could give a hoot if the fans want to shout at Crosby, in fact I wished they did it louder, but when the organist joins in, that’s crosses the line. In other words, par for the course for Philadelphia.